Doms and Apex TF

Just thought I'd take a few minutes to share some thoughts/advice/experience with the Apex TF in case you haven't done it or used a dom on one.

I ran my first Apex TF on my Plant/Fire/Fire dom the other day with a pug. Off the top of my head, the team was:
2 brutes
1 tank
1 cor
1 blaster
2 doms
1 MM


We got BM down to 1/4 HP, but ended up failing for various reasons: melee heavy team, a couple of the melees refused to 'stick and move', the /kin cor thought they were a 'healer' and kept leaving the BM map to the roof to tp and rez fallen teammates instead of laying on the -regen of transfusion, dead allies waited for rez rather than hitting the hosp and reloading insps, our MM quit team at some point, and the two doms were fighting each other as to what to do:

From my dom perspective, if we held/immob'd BM, then the melees would stand and fight her and the blue nukes would lay waste to them. So I stopped controlling her and let her run free so the melees could hit and run. But the other dom kept rooting her so the blaster and corruptor, plus we 2 doms could leverage ranged attacks.

Anyway, my advice is to change your tactics depending on team composition. If you have a lot of melees, it's a good idea NOT to control BM at all. Just use your attacks. If you have a lot of ranged teammates, then hold/immob her so you can focus everything on where she's standing. Aside from that, follow the advice of this guide.


Overall, doms can really shine in this TF. Controls don't last as long vs the lvl 54 foes, but they can buy your teammates time to get out of trouble and make the missions go faster (confusing the hydra to attack the pylon, holding the healer clockwork, immobilizing the dancing swords, etc.)


I'm going to give this a another go this week hopefully with some folks I know. The increased coordination alone should make the difference.

Completed this thing on my second run at it. Team was much stronger than first time:

2 doms (plant/fire - mine and grav/nrg - Demon Song's)
2 controllers (/emp and /rad... not sure of primary)
1 corruptor (ice/cold - Hack)
1 defender (TA/arch)
1 MM (bots/FF)
1 brute (SS/WP - Hirsh)

As you can see, lots of ranged options. We had tons of control, plenty of buffs and debuffs, and a lot of pets. At first I was thinking I'd have liked some more heal and raw dmg, but the amount of control and debuff we had, plus the shields made it pretty easy. I think we might've been able to do a master run if we had more experience (at least half the team hadn't run it before). It also helped having 3 people on the team that I've played with a ton.

Anyway, one thing I noticed with the doms was that confusion really helps this TF. Most controls last only a few seconds vs lvl 54s, but just that small window of confuse made the missions go much faster as the mobs beat on each other with their alphas. Demon's grav wasn't very effective with her controls... wormhole was useless as a teleport tool because I don't think the +4s moved (at least the bosses don't). So that took out one of her best tools.

Versus BM, we just stacked the crap out of holds and immobs, then fired at range over and over again. Hirsh's brute played hockey goalie, picking up ambushers and swords while the rest of us focused on BM. The ambushes and nukes suprised a few of the TF newbs, but they got the hang of it after a few deaths. I only died 2x fighting her and it was stray blue patches of death I jumped in that got me.

I think that Creepers was a great tool here as well. The multiple targets seemed to draw a lot of the sword nuke aggro on top of BM's location and away from us ranged squishies. The MMs pets were also great at charging into her and keeping her focus on melee.

Last thing I'm thinking about is the use of confuse. Has anyone (mind dom I would think) stacked enough confuse on BM that she nukes herself with the blue sword bombs? I'm not sure if that would work, or if they're considered separate non-targetable mobs. But if it does work, that could be a great way to dominate her dead in minutes.

I've heard of someone trying and failing to confuse her but that doesnt mean it isn't possible. They easily could have missed or not had enough recharage in confuse to overcome her magnitude.

Doms are really great in Apex for 1 big reason: mob scatter. In the last phase of mission 1 and after battle maiden retreats in mission 2, locking down the mobs immediately as they spawn is the best thing possible for your team. If you're fast enough to do it, (especially in mission 2 where its alot harder to do) you can improve your team's time by quite a bit.

You're also right about not to use controls on battle maiden in the mission 2 if you have melee on the team, especially if at least 1 of the melee has and uses taunt for the -range so that she will come out of the blue patches quicker.

Confuse is great since they're lvl 54s. A confused lvl 54 mob attacking another lvl 54 is like a lvl 50 attacking a lvl 50. Which makes a big difference right now.